FOREST TREES BY NATUEAL EEPEODUCTION. 67 



Maples, and the Buttonwood or Sycamore. It is adTis- 

 able to make these cuttings in the fall ; they should be 

 about twelve inches long, and made in wood of the cur- 

 rent season's growth, and heeled, during the winter, in a 

 moist place, protected against frost. This serves to 

 form on the base of the cuttings a callus from which the 

 roots push out, as soon as they are planted in the spring. 

 They should be set deep enough to nearly cover their 

 greatest part, and treated in the same way as trans- 

 planted seedlings, except that they should be set slanting 

 — not straight. For when the ground settles it packs to 

 the cuttings, and prevents them from becoming loose, a 

 result, and a very injurious one at that, which often pre- 

 vents the prosperous growth of straight-planted cuttings. 

 To promote the production of roots of cuttings which 

 are planted in dry soil, they should during the summer 

 months be mulched, as only a moist soil is able to secure 

 the quick and strong development of roots. 



Cuttings do not well stand transplanting. It is, there- 

 fore, advisable to set them where they are to remain. 



Coniferous trees in general cannot be reproduced in 

 the natural ways Just named, but require the artificial 

 means of propagation by seeding or planting. However, 

 there is a natural way in which denuded wood-tracts, 

 which had been covered with conifers, may be replanted, 

 provided there are left at proper distances standard or 

 parent trees, from the scattered seeds of which young 

 plants can spring up. This treatment can be recom- 

 mended as efficient with very poor soil where there is no 

 danger of grasses easily getting hold of the ground. But 

 if it is to be expected that such will be the case, a light 

 tillage with a wooden harrow should be given to the soil 

 in the late spring. By this operation the mosses and 

 grasses spreading over the ground are destroyed, and the 

 seeds which fell from the parent trees will be sufficiently 

 covered in order to secure to the tract a natural regenera- 



